This invention relates to a carton and a blank for forming the carton for containing a number of articles, and in particular, to a carton, the capacity of which can be increased to accommodate additional items and provide access to the articles in the carton.
Cartons for encasing multiple articles are useful for enabling consumers to obtain and transport a desired quantity of individual articles such as soft drinks or other beverages.
It is often desirable to serve a large quantity of containers, such as beverage and foodstuff containers, in a chilled condition. It may be desirable or necessary to chill such containers at locations or events for which there is little or no access to refrigerators or freezers, or at events for which it is not desirable to use refrigerators or freezers. For example, a large quantity of beverage and foodstuff containers may be served at parties, cookouts, picnics or vacation spots where it is desired to chill the containers for an extended period of time. In such cases, it is customary to place the containers in a cooler containing ice, which often requires the containers to be removed from their original packaging. In some cases, it would be advantageous to be able to chill containers in their original packaging without having to provide a separate cooler. Such cartons need to be strong enough to support multiple articles. It is also desirable for such cartons to be easy to handle and portable. It is also useful for the consumer to be able to add ice-cubes into such a carton to cool the beverage cans or bottles contained within the carton. It is also often desirable for the cartons to be adaptable so that the capacity of the carton can be increased to accommodate the addition of ice-cubes.
Such cartons are known in the art, but each has certain drawbacks. Many such cartons do not provide a means for increasing the capacity of the carton to accommodate the addition of ice cubes and so the carton is limited in the number of ice cubes which it can receive and the degree to which the containers in the carton are adequately chilled.
A carton having additional side and end panels which can be unfolded to provide additional capacity to the carton is known, but many such cartons require a considerable quantity of material to form the carton.
The prior art devices suffer from several drawbacks. The prior art devices do not allow incorporation of refrigeration elements into a standard paperboard beverage carton. Moreover, the prior art devices fail to effectively maximize the contact areas between the beverage containers and chilling elements, which enhances the cooling function provided by such chilling elements. These and other drawbacks of the prior art are overcome by this invention.
In view of the above, it is desirable to provide a carton that is convertible from a first configuration for holding containers during storage and/or transport to a second configuration in which the carton forms a cooler configured to receive ice for chilling and serving the containers while minimizing the amount of material required to form the carton.